Russian President Vladimir Putin’s wartime purge of liberals and human rights activists has forced the Sakharov Center, a museum and cultural space in Moscow, to close as the Kremlin rips up the legacy of rights defenders like Sakharov, who died in 1989.
Vyacheslav Bakhmin, chairman of the Sakharov Center board and co-chairman of the Moscow Helsinki Group, which was closed by authorities in January, has no idea where the center will house its museum collection and the archives.
Laws are enforced arbitrarily, deepening uncertainty and fear. One person may be fined or jailed for 15 days for describing abuses by Russia’s military in Ukraine. Others face much worse. More than 19,500 people have been arrested for taking part in protests in Russia since the invasion, according to rights group OVD-Info, and more than 6,000 people have been charged with discrediting the media, according to independent outlet Mediazona.
As the Soviet Union opened up in the late 1980s under Mikhail Gorbachev, Sakharov was elected to the Congress of People’s Deputies in the first partially free elections in 1989. Thousands of letters from desperate citizens poured in to him from across Russia, complaining of Soviet abuse of its citizens, and are now part of the center’s archives.
The regime’s tightening control has made it harder for Russians seeking access to files of forebears falsely executed by the Soviet regime, said Marina Agaltsova, a human rights lawyer with Memorial, which was abolished by Russian authorities last year.
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